Raspberry Ripple Productions

Raspberry Ripple is proud to present:
'Risky Business - a little show and a big conversation'
at Geelong Performing Arts Centre

June 28th 2023
Studio 4
6.30pm - 8pm

Auslan Interpreted
Audio described
Recording available 29th June

Great to see the Geelong Arts Centre offering pay-what-you-can tickets for Risky Business to increase accessibility for everyone 👏

Raspberry Ripple is delighted to bring Risky Business to the Geelong Performing Arts, and to introduce some truly outstanding disabled performers to Geelong audiences. Over the last few years we have seen disabled performers and advocates in various situations where their presence has added a much-needed point of view.

Eliza Hull is an award winning singer/songwriter whose voice has brought new thinking to the music industry, and new perspective to iconic programs like Q and A.

Andy Jackson is an award winning poet and Spoken Word artist whose books have brought much-needed and profound thinking about all of the human condition to the world of poetry. He has recently won the PM’s Literary Prize for Poetry.

Olivia Muscat is a writer, critic and performer whose work has featured in several anthologies and on various places around the internet including Kill Your Darlings, The Saturday Paper and Refinery-29. She has been featured at several writers’ festivals around Australia. She won an Arts Access Victoria Lesley Hall scholarship in 2020 and was runner up in the Kill Your Darlings new critic award in 2021. In 2022 she was awarded a Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellowship and a Varuna Writers’ Space Fellowship. She was also awarded residencies at Footscray Community Arts Centre and Arts House through Culture Lab to develop two performance showings in 2022.

Kate Hood is a well-known wheelchair-using actor, writer, theatre maker in the mainstream, and artistic director of Raspberry Ripple Productions. She is the creative brains behind Risky Business, and its director.

Zoe Boesen is an acclaimed actor, director, disabled advocate, and has come on board as facilitator of Risky Business. She brings her own unique perspective as Co-CEO and founder of LOOM Arts and Management, an agency which represents only disabled artists.

Together, the artists involved in Risky Business are delighted to take to the stage to give voice to some new thinking around performance and disability, and to celebrate true diversity in Australia.

Risky Business was originally commissioned by Malthouse Theatre with support from Gandel Philanthropy

Description:
A colour photo of five disabled artists involved in 'Risky Business'. Poet Andy Jackson, Singer/Songwriter Eliza Hull, Artistic Director of Raspberry Ripple Kate Hood, Actor Olivia Muscat, Co-Director of LOOM Arts and Management and Facilitator Zoe Boesen

Risky Business: A Little Show and A Big Conversation - Geelong Arts Centre At Geelong Arts Centre, we believe theatre is for everybody. To increase accessibility, we are offering pay-what-you-can tickets for Risky Business.

This statement from the PWD Committee, after the SA theatre company, No Strings Attached Disabiity Theatre nominated SIA's controversial film 'MUSIC' as a fundraiser for their company.

No Strings Attached is not disability led, but uses exclusively disabled performers.

Right now, it does not have an artistic director.

Clearly it needs one with a disability.

This is an example of the importance of disability-led. This company, which is run by able-bodied people, uses disabled performers to gain its reputation as one of this country's leading Disability Arts companies, but clearly has zero understanding of the furore SIA's film MUSIC has created world-wide and here in Australia.

For us disabled people it is normal to be turned away from.

Or should I say, excised.

Kate Hood and the team at Raspberry Ripple have been workshopping ways to embed accessibility into live, and streamed, theatre. See their progress this Saturday. Be treated to a couple of excerpts of the work and a live Q&A with the team behind ‘Queen Esme of Collingwood’.

Join Raspberry Ripple’s Take Over! At Home Residency Showing at 2pm, Saturday 19 September - Free - registrations essential (register by 11am on the day)

https://www.artscentremelbourne.com.au/festival-and-series/take-over/kate-hood